Usage

The demultiplex program provides several ways to demultiplex any number of FASTA or a FASTQ files based on a list of barcodes. This list can either be provided via a file or guessed from the data. The demultiplexer can be set to search for the barcodes in the header, or in the read itself. To allow for mismatches, two distance functions (edit distance and Hamming distance) are available.

This program works with subcommands, an overview of which is shown when the help option is used.

demultiplex -h

Each subcommand has its own help option, which shows a full list of options for that particular subcommand. For example:

demultiplex demux -h

Illumina FASTQ files

For Illumina FASTQ files, the barcodes can usually be found in the header of each FASTQ record. Currently, the demultiplex program supports the following types of headers.

Supported headers.

type

select

autodetect

Classical Illumina

--format=normal

yes

HiSeq X

--format=x

yes

UMI

--format=umi

no

The classical Illumina headers and the newer HiSeq X headers are detected automatically, the UMI type headers need to be selected manually.

Demultiplexing is done with the demux subcommand by providing a list of barcodes. The barcodes file is formatted as follows:

name sequence

So a typical barcodes file might look like this:

index1 ACGTAA
index2 GTAAGG

To use this to demultiplex two FASTQ files, where we assume that the barcode can be found in the header of the first file, we use the following command:

demultiplex demux barcodes.tsv file_1.fq file_2.fq

This will generate six files:

file_1_index1.fq
file_2_index1.fq
file_1_index2.fq
file_2_index2.fq
file_1_UNKNOWN.fq
file_2_UNKNOWN.fq

the first four files will contain records assigned to index1 and index2, the last two will contain anything that could not be assigned.

The demux command allows for one substitution in a barcode by default. This behaviour can be modified with the -m and -d options. The -d option enables support for all single nucleotide variants (substitutions, deletions and insertions), while the -m option controls the amount of mismatches.

Mismatches examples.

example

description

-m 2

Allow for two substitutions.

-d

Allow for one single nucleotide variant.

-m 3 -d

Allow for three single nucleotide variants.

Note

Before modifying the mismatch control options, it is advisable to check whether the set of barcodes used is compatible with these settings. The barcode design and validation package can be used for this.

If the list of barcodes is not known beforehand, the guess subcommand can be used to search for a top list of barcodes. For example, if we want to search for the top five barcodes in the first 1000 records, we use the following:

demultiplex guess -o barcodes.tsv -t 5 -n 1000 file.fq

This will generate the barcodes file that can be used for the demux subcommand.

If the number of barcodes is not known beforehand, an alternative selection method can be used which selects all barcodes with a minimum number of occurrences. The following command will generate a barcode file of all barcodes that occur at least five times in the first 1000 reads:

demultiplex guess -o barcodes.tsv -f -t 5 -n 1000 file.fq

Other files

For platforms other than Illumina, or for alternative sequencing runs, like those coming from 10X experiments, barcodes sometimes end up at a specific location in each read. It can also be that the barcode is in the header, but only part of this barcode is used, this happens when dual indexing is used for example. To deal with these cases, both the guess as well as the demux subcommand can be instructed to look voor the barcode in the read with the -r option and a selection can be made by providing a start- and end coordinate via the -s and -e options. For example, if we want to search for barcodes in the first six nucleotides of a read, we use the following command:

demultiplex demux -r -e 6 barcodes.tsv file.fq

Multiple barcodes

Suppose we have two files containing barcodes that are used for dual indexing:

  • A.tsv for barcode 1 and 2.

  • B.tsv for barcode 3 and 4.

Furthermore, suppose that the first barcode can be found in the header of read 1 and the second one in the header of read 2.

We can then demultiplex in two steps:

demultiplex demux A.tsv read_1.fq read_2.fq

This will result in two new pairs of files:

  • read_1_1.fq, read_2_1.fq

  • read_1_2.fq, read_2_2.fq

We can now demultiplex each of these pairs as follows:

demultiplex demux B.tsv read_2_1.fq read_1_1.fq
demultiplex demux B.tsv read_2_2.fq read_1_2.fq

Which will result in the final list of pairs:

  • read_1_1_3.fq, read_2_1_3.fq

  • read_1_1_4.fq, read_2_1_4.fq

  • read_1_2_3.fq, read_2_2_3.fq

  • read_1_2_4.fq, read_2_2_4.fq

Barcodes at unknown locations

Libraries for long read platforms like PacBio and Oxford Nanopore often have barcodes in the reads at unknown locations. To demultiplex these kind of datasets, it is necessary to align the barcode to the read to find it. This is exactly what the match subcommand does.

The barcodes file is very similar to the one in the demux command, except that it allows for multiple barcodes per sample. If dual barcoding is used, the formatting is as follows.

name sequence1 sequence2

So a typical barcodes file might look like this:

index1 ACGTAA TTGCAA
index2 GTAAGG GTGTAA

Demultiplexing is done as follows.

demultiplex match barcodes.tsv reads.fq